Happy November everyone!
November arrived at the Meeson household with something of a whimper. The missus is a Halloween fanatic; she has orange “Christmas” lights all over the inside of the house, spiderwebs on the chandelier, pictures of ravens up on the wall – you know, the usual Halloween decorations, right? This year, we expanded our Halloween decorating to the outside of the house, putting up a plyboard witch cutout (lit by red and yellow floodlights wired up by yours truly) and a number of Styrofoam tombstones (all cut out and painted by yours truly).
To be frank, we were looking pretty festive.
So the big day rolls around; we have a metric ton of candy in the bucket all ready to hand out. The doorbell rings around 6:45, and I hand out the first candy to a nice, little girl in a gypsy costume.
And then… nothing.
We had exactly one trick-or-treater.
We gave up around 8:30, turned off the lights, and soaked our sadness in some Great Pumpkin. I got a rock, indeed.
Top Ten Scars Commons
So let’s put Halloween behind us, unwrap a Twix bar, and take a look at what Scars has to give us in terms of commons. I’ve heard say that – comparatively – Scars of Mirrodin has very few common and uncommon cards that we can expect to see being played in Constructed formats. These are the ten cards that I’m excited to play with.
10 – Moriok Replica
Of all the Replicas, I think Moriok Replica has the best chance of making his way into Constructed decks. Night’s Whisper is a pretty powerful ability, and while I don’t think you’d want both Moriok Replica and Sign in Blood, Moriok Replica gives you a way to draw cards in a potentially recurrable body. (Imagine this guy in MBC stuck inside a Mimic Vat.) He blocks, he comes back with Liliana’s ultimate ability, and he can be pitched to Fauna Shaman (or fetched by her) if you wanted to try out a B/G Shaman build… at some point, I’ll explore what all I can do with him.
9 – Steady Progress
I’m infatuated with the proliferate mechanic. There seems to be so much you can do with it, from ramping planeswalkers to their ultimate ability, to abusing all the artifacts with charge counters on them (newest potential addition to last week’s Ablaze of Glory deck: Eternity Vessel!), to one thing I haven’t seen explored yet: increasing the +1/+1 counters on all your Allies. Pumping your entire team by one seems like a bargain for three mana; drawing the extra card becomes just gravy at that point.
8 – Revoke Existence
Artifact removal seems to always be a necessity whenever an artifact block rolls around. What I like about Revoke Existence is that it goes the ‘exile’ route; we don’t have a lot of recursion rearing its ugly head now, but anyone who’s been locked in a looping Mindslaver knows that sometimes, exiling an artifact is useful. Revoke Existence hits pesky enchantments, too, so you can snag back your Elspeth sitting under your opponent’s Volition Reins.
7 – Perilous Myr
Perilous Myr makes me think of Bottle Gnomes, for some reason. Probably that robust shape. This little guy is an interesting package – he comes down early to act as a deterrent to attacking, but not because he prevents a ton of damage like a Wall of Omens, but because he’ll almost always trade with something better (and more expensive) than himself. (Vengevine, I’m lookin’ at you.) On the other side, he can act as an attacker that no one wants to kill, kind of like a Tuktuk the Explorer for the non-red decks. Who’s going to blast a Perilous Myr when (again) he’ll then just trade with your Fauna Shaman or Elvish Archdruid? He obviously goes into any Myr “combo” deck, but I think he has potential in other decks that want an early defensive creature.
6 – Plague Stinger and all the infect commons
(Something of a cop-out, but really, with a mechanic this parasitic, you’ve really got to take them all together or not at all.)
Say what you want about the infect mechanic, it still is making a presence for itself, at least at the local level. I don’t expect it’s quite ready for the big stage, but right now there’s plenty to build a deck with that’s nice for FNM – and cheap as chips.
(Watching Jamie Oliver on telly, sorry. Television, sorry.)
4 Plague Stinger
4 Ichorclaw Myr
4 Necropede
4 Vector Asp
4 Blight Mamba
4 Putrefax
2 Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
4 Doom Blade
3 Contagion Clasp
4 Virulent Swipe
8 Forest
15 Swamp
Rare Cost Summary:
Putrefax ($1.99 x 4 = $7.96)
Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon ($12.49 x 2 = $24.98)
Has a nice curve, a little bit of removal, and a “backup plan” once you get a handful of poison counters on your controllish opponent, and they lock up the combat arena. If you remember from last week, I saw a lot of variety in the three infect decks I played against at FNM, and this pulls in what I liked about the different builds.
(Although, I must say, the Contagion Clasp comes from me – I had a blast trying to kill them with their own poison counters.)
5 – Assault Strobe
A great tool for the Red Deck Wins speed archetype, Assault Strobe really is an “all-in” proposition. Resolve it and hit with the target? You look like a genius. 7/2 double-striking Kiln Fiend on turn 3 is within reason, and downright scary. But resolve it, and then watch your double-striking monster get Condemned or Bolted? You might as well be playing Battle Mastery for all the good your sorcery-speed trick just did.
4 – Stoic Rebuttal
We went very quickly from having a veritable dearth of good counterspells (and a lot of people talking about how Cancel was playable) to having an abundance, didn’t we? Negate, Mana Leak, and now Stoic Rebuttal. (Heck, even Flashfreeze is practically maindeckable.) Stoic Rebuttal is, I think, the one metalcraft card that really doesn’t need a deck built around it. If you have to cast it as Cancel, big deal, it’s still good because it does exactly what you want it to do: counter target spell. If you happen to be running something like a Grand Architect artifact ramp deck, then you’re getting Counterspell instead of Cancel – great!
In Colorado, State Champ Michael Svein ran two Stoic Rebuttals maindeck and didn’t run enough artifacts in the entire 75 to ever trigger the metalcraft. One Ratchet Bomb. That was it.
3 – Glint Hawk
Two power. One mana. Eventually we’re going to get to a point where this math doesn’t faze us. Wizards is going to print a four-power one-drop, and we’ll all look at it and complain that it doesn’t have first strike.
Glint Hawk is good enough to have already made its presence felt in Standard as part of the creature suite in the Quest Equipment deck. I haven’t given this deck enough press, but it truly is capable of some explosive openings – and is remarkably cheap to build, since it’s primarily uncommons and commons (and the really crucial piece of equipment is two bucks). Take the deck that Jeremiah Edwards won Idaho States with.
Rare Cost Summary:
Argentum Armor ($1.99 x 3 = $5.97)
Basilisk Collar ($5.99 x 1 = $5.99)
Sword of Body and Mind ($12.49 x 1 = $12.49)
Stoneforge Mystic ($6.99 x 4 = $27.96)
Arid Mesa ($11.99 x 4 = $47.96)
Marsh Flats ($10.99 x 4 = $43.96)
Kemba, Kha Regent ($0.99 x 1 = $0.99)
There’s no Steppe Lynx in the deck, so for those of us looking to trim costs, taking out the fetchlands is probably the first place to start, possibly replacing some with Evolving Wilds; although that cuts into the explosive early draws where all of a sudden you have a 6/8 Ornithopter flying in.
But, let’s be honest – those fetchlands should’ve been the first thing you traded for in Zendikar.
Wizards must have a thing for stapling multiples of a card together. First we got Dreamstone Hedron as a triple Mind Stone, and now we have Grasp of Darkness as a double Disfigure. I’m really hoping that Mirrodin Besieged will give us a double Jasmine Boreal. (Well, why not. I’d run one in every sideboard from here until October 2012.) Grasp of Darkness gives any deck relying on black removal a second option for handling anything with a casting cost under five mana, letting them reserve their Doom Blades for bigger targets.
1 – Galvanic Blast
The easiest sort of statement on a player’s longevity in the game of Magic is by asking them how much damage a single red mana should do at instant speed. If they’re my Magical age, they say two – since I started around Tempest, and my real measuring stick is Shock. If they’re older – or way younger – they say three, since Lightning Bolt is the original (and current) Standard. (If they say one, then sadly they were introduced to the game by one of the Starter sets. Scorching Spear rules!)
I dunno, maybe they say Goblin Grenade. You get what I mean.
Galvanic Blast is a conditional four, but it’s hard to foresee a situation where it wouldn’t be a straight-up four damage for one mana. (At least, in Constructed.) Useful early on to kill off important opposing creatures like Goblin Guide and Fauna Shaman, it’s equally useful late game when you need to handle a Celestial Colonnade or a Molten-Tail Masticore (if you can).
Now, it’s not lost on me that for #1 and #2 are creature-removal spells that can’t handle Titans or a Wurmcoil Engine. Not every set can have a Vendetta.
Wrap It Up
If you’re in the Boston area, this weekend is your chance to get out and snatch a part of one of those giant StarCityGames.com Open purses. Standard on Saturday, Legacy on Sunday! I had a great time playing in both days in Denver a few months ago, and I recommend that you get out if you can – they’re a great event!
Until next week,
– Dave
Dave dot massive at gmail and davemassive on Twitter and Facebook